


A Glow

by ellelore



Series: A Glow [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Post Great War, Post Season 7, Sad, boatbaby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-28
Updated: 2018-02-28
Packaged: 2019-03-25 01:51:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13823958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellelore/pseuds/ellelore
Summary: Years after the Great War, Jon takes his son to visit a simple memorial on Dragonstone.Just a one-shot of some thoughts on the future,





	A Glow

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!
> 
> This is my first fic, and I just had to put it down after having some swirling imaginations of what might happen during/after the wars. I'm convinced boatbaby is a thing after season 7, however, most of the work/theories I've read have a hopeful future for the Targling, so this is a different take. 
> 
> Obvi, I don't own any of this. 
> 
> Enjoy!

The wind's strength was familiar, and brought about a somewhat unwelcome sense of nostalgia. The present days were the far better, relative to anything in the past. It was different today though, a boy stood at his shoulder instead of his wife and they kept their eyes to the ground lest the gusts of air drive at them and press for more tears.

“This is it?”

Jon nodded, words surrounding this place remained difficult. “Aye.”

“It’s not very big,” Daeron said, though without accusation. Not the grandeur he might have expected for such a burial.

“She wasn’t very big when she died,” Jon said. “You know how small Visenya is. Smaller than that.” The boy shuddered somewhat, unused to the whipping winds and Jon opened his cloak, pulled his son in, knowing well that the thick fur would keeping out the cold slap of the air.

“No one talks about her. People talk about all the things you and Ma and your friends did. No one talks about Rhaella.”

“Few people ever saw her, knew of her,” Jon felt his heart grow heavy, knowing he was included in that collection. A weight in his gut as he considered the first visit to the simple stone plaque in the ground, with Daenerys at his side. Numb, it had always been numbness when he thought of their first daughter. Rage as well, but that was permanently laced through each memory of the war, even those that should have been pleasant. Less now, because there were three others who renewed the light that had fled with their sister.

He knelt to the grass touched the stone that had little more than the Targaryen crest etched roughly into it by his wife. It was worn by the elements now, thankfully rain and no longer snow, and soon the grave would be seen as little more than another rock on the rugged island.

“Why here?” Daeron asked, smoky eyes bright. They shared the same dark curls, the eyes and mouth, the boy was spitting image of his father. Rhaella had been Dany, what Jon imagined Dany would have been as a child.

“There was nowhere else. Winterfell would have been best, but it was only ruins then, buried in snow, as was King’s Landing. I was at Riverrun when she was born, but neither of us considered it.”

“Dragonstone was sacked,” Daeron pointed out, his dark brows knit together with confusion. Jon rose to regard the castle to the south. “You came here when there was nothing?”

“We couldn’t bury her where she was born, not with all the others who died in those weeks. They all deserved better. You see how the walls still stand here. Our enemies tried to burn it, but it would not fall. Everything inside is ash, but the structure remains. This was the only place… this… this is where your mother was born. It seemed right,” Jon said, his voice uneven as it was the day they had decided. It had never seemed right that she was alone.

_Not alone._

There were memorial pillars atop communal burials on lower hills, closer to the smoke kissed base of the keep. They were for the Dothraki, the Unsullied, all of those who died under Euron Greyjoy’s unexpected siege before Rhaella was born. She wasn’t alone here, not really, and anywhere else would have been wrong. They’d both said those words, doing their best to convince themselves to leave her and return to the mainland to continue their war.

“Could you bring her home?” Daeron curled into Jon’s hip, perhaps from the cold or perhaps at a fear of being left behind like his older sister.

“No,” Jon shook his head. “This is our land, whether your mother and I are King and Queen or not.”

“That’d be strange,” Daeron said. “To bring up a body after you bury it.”

“It’s just her ashes,” Jon whispered. He didn’t want to frighten the boy, but surely he remembered what they had said, about burning everyone. The Others roamed while Rhaella lived and died. She at least had the right to a pyre, a careful burial, somewhat the Targaryen way. It wasn’t worth mentioning that they had disinterred hundreds, just to burn them, that doing so had felt equally as wrong as interring them. They only managed the marked burials, but it was worth it as to not face their friends, families… in the army of the dead.

The boy pulled out of the cloak, glanced around the horizon from the prominence they stood on. Grey water of the sea stretched to the east, a pallid stretch of grass surrounded them. “Are the dragons buried here?”

Jon had to laugh, Daeron couldn’t have known how massive Drogon was, even with Rhaegal as reference. The boy was evidently mystified by the idea of burying a dragon, perhaps by the idea of a dragon eternally sleeping within the ground.

“No. We had to burn Viserion,” Jon winced at the memory. With the death of the Night King, the undead dragon was easily incinerated under his brother’s breath. “Drogon’s bones are in the north, in The Neck where he fell. He was too big to move. When we go north, we’ll pass it, your mother will show you.”

“Why not you? You’re showing me Rhaella.”

“I wasn’t there,” Jon said. “I was further north than your mother at that point in the war. But I was here when we buried your sister.” The boy fell solemn again, Jon wondered if he used to look as Daeron did now when he had pouted about his misfortunes as a boy.

“Will you show Visenya and Jaeh?” Daeron looked up at him with expectation. “Vis will be happy she has a sister.”

“Yes. When they’re older. They’ll see one day. Hopefully, we can come back, and stay for a time.”

“Why did we come _today_?” Jon realized he had expected Dany to explain to their son why it was suddenly so important to visit the island, but it appeared she’d forgotten. Or expected him to say it.

“Because she died this day. She would have been eight now.”

 _Eight years_. The admission pulled at his gut, dragged his voice from his throat, choked him with the force.

 _Oh. This is why Dany couldn’t tell him_.

He had thought of Rhaella’s age, imagined her playing about with silver curls down her back on this very knoll many times, but the despair at her loss had never been so concentrated. She hadn’t lived more than three moons and yet, in this place at the exact moment, Jon fully anticipated her running over the crest, laughing and calling for him. Perhaps she would be angry that she had been alone all these years, but she was alive in these dreams. Who she could have been was swiftly becoming more real in his mind than his memories of who others had been. Hope, she had brought so much hope and she had died of a fever like any child living in a state of impoverishment might. She was a dragon, but she was overtaken by a flare of heat from within, one of thousands of babes who died in what could have been the Long Night.

Daeron sat on the ground then, crossed his legs and pulled his own small cloak about his body. A small hand lingered on the marker of his sister’s grave, tracing the warped lines of the dragon heads with bare fingers. “It would be nice to live here,” he said in a soft voice, watching the grey flat of clouds overhead.

“Aye. Soon we can turn our attentions here. It was to be Rhaella’s by right, but now, it is yours.” Jon continued to stand, wanting to be anywhere else but this place. He wanted to be eight years in the past, on the outskirts of a ruined King’s Landing with the survivors out in the snow. And he wanted to take his sickly girl, bring her to Dragonstone, so she could see more than the tattered continent before her death, she could see the sea and its promise of more.

Daeron didn’t ask why Dragonstone hadn’t been fixed earlier, why it still stood in such a state. It wasn’t even half as bad as an unoccupied Harrenhal when they had decided to claim it as a new capital, yet this island remained untouched for nearly a decade. Their boy knew more about the war than either Dany or Jon wished. But he had been surrounded by regeneration, the slow change of his birthplace in The Riverlands, the gradual resurrection of his father’s home in the north from its icy tomb. Perhaps he understood that they could not make Dragonstone a priority any earlier. Perhaps he knew this yet he knew so little of his sister…

“What else do you remember us saying of your sister?” Jon asked the boy who remained enamoured with the stone, and who didn’t look up when answering his father.

“That she died of a fever, in Ser Davos’ arms. He didn’t even want to hold Vis, like he was scared,” the boy said in a quiet voice.

“He was holding Rhaella that night. So that your mother could sleep, she was just as ill…” Jon explained, though again there was no blame in the boy’s tone. Jon knew when he sent the Knight south to the Queen and Princess that the man would do everything in his power to love the girl in Jon’s absence. A grandfather, a protector as he was for Shireen. And he was the last comfort their lovely girl knew, she would have wanted for nothing upon her death.

“I know she’s the only one of us that looks like Ma.” Daeron continued, now picking up a thin twig running it along the crevices of the plaque. “I know you only saw her once. Why did you do that?” He glanced up at his father now.

Jon stepped away without meaning to, retreating from the answer was always simpler than confronting it. “I had to put duty before all else. We had to do that during the war… more than we ever wanted to.” There would come a time for Jon to tell his son to prepare to do the same, but the boy was just seven and much of the knowledge his parents had imparted to him was rather dire.

“We should be leaving, Daeron,” Jon said, his unease remaining. “Lord Tyrion will be scolding me for leaving our business in Maidenpool.”

“We should just fly all the way home,” Daeron grinned, rising again and sliding his hand into Jon’s. In the distant hazy sky, a black silhouette of a beast emerged. The prince knew well enough once in Maidenpool they’d ride on horseback to Harrenhal, but he never failed to tease for a jaunt on the dragon. However, it was important to enforce a sense of normality on their children, and important for Jon to keep his mind straight.

“Why didn’t Ma come?”

“Your mother comes on Rhaella’s nameday, by herself. She prefers it that way. But she’ll be happy you’ve visited.” Dany never blamed him for his absence, not as he did himself, but her loss and grief was much different than his own. They mourned her together, but he knew even these years later, his wife needed time to grieve by herself.

Rhaegal was near to landing, consuming the entire northern horizon. Daeron split from Jon and raced ahead to greet his brother while Jon continued at his own pace. He loathed himself for leaving her again though he wished to escape this place and the monumental weight of loss it bludgeoned him with.

“Why _can’t_ we fly home? Lord Tyrion shouldn’t scold you, you’re the King!” Daeron argued once Rhaegal had landed and Jon had caught up. He crossed his arms over the straps of his cloak across his chest. Rhaegal snorted as though siding with the boy, annoyed at having to make multiple journeys himself.

“Aye, I’m the King, but he began scolding me when I was a lad in Winterfell and I don’t think he’ll be quitting in the near future. Best to keep a man like that happy if we can. Up we go.” He hoisted Daeron onto Rhaegal’s extended scaled arm and the boy scrambled up. Rhaegal snorted once more, moving closer to Jon, his heat palpable, cutting through the whipping wind.

“You remember her, don’t you?” Jon glanced back from where they came, where there was no trace anyone rested beneath the prickling grass. Rhaegal and Ghost had been stirred into a frenzy at her birth despite being leagues away, and again when she had passed. Jon didn’t need the words Dany wrote – _our precious girl has died_ – to know that it had happened. Rhaegal stepped to Jon and warmed even more, pressing the side of his snout into Jon’s right arm.

Eight years later and it remained impossible to forget their first girl. The light in the night, a soft glow in the dim that had swallowed the world.

**Author's Note:**

> Some disclaimers:
> 
> Harrenhal seems like a great place for a future capital for many reasons, but mostly because at this point (in the show at least) it sits without any Lord to oversee it, and because it's my prediction that a lot of places will not exist after the war. 
> 
> I'm thinking Kings Landing goes up in some wildfire mishap after Dany has taken it (after being baited south with the the destruction of Dragonstone), but Dany stays to help the survivors. In turn, she and boatbaby (who is born pre-destruction) fall ill with thousands of others. Jon does his duty as King in Da Norf and remains semi-north to protect all the people, and fend off the Others. 
> 
> Also, I picked these names for the children for no other reason than that I like them. 
> 
> Thanks for reading and let me know what you think!


End file.
